Globalization in higher education in Egypt in a historical context

Abstract

As globalization has become a complex force that affects all aspects of life, no nation can deny its importance, and no community is immune from its effects. Hence, globalization greatly concerns higher education.Consequently, higher education has moved from a peripheral to a central position in the responses of governments to globalization. It is a key factor in developing countries based on evidence from the World Bank's Task Force Report on Higher Education in Developing Countries (2000), and undoubtedly, it is viewed as crucial to developed countries. Peter Scott (1998) has pointed out that all universities are subject to the same processes of globalization — not only partly as objects and even victims of these processes but also partly as subjects or key agents of globalization. Universities are positioned within national systems and locked into national contexts, and the majority are state institutions. However, globalization is inescapably bound to the emergence of a society that trades in symbolic goods, worldwide brands, images-as-commodities, and scientific know-how. The tensions generated by such a dichotomy necessarily have led to changes and reforms. Marijk van der Wende (2007) has suggested with regard to higher education, that there are four rationales for globalization: the economic rationale, political rationale, academic rationale, and cultural rationale. These rationales provide a useful framework for exploring the different ways in which globalization has engendered reforms in the higher education sector.Because higher education is an integral part of every aspect of society, it has an enormous impact, especially when integrated with globalization, as there is an impulse towards cooperation, social cohesion, social harmony, transparency, equity and the involvement of greater numbers of people in higher education. Additionally, there are financial issues, such as the neoliberal agenda, which calls for competition, free trade and market dominance.This paper is interested in exploring the integration of globalization in higher education, or vice versa, and taking the perspective of history to answer questions such as the following: was globalization implemented as far back historically as 1798? Can globalization have been embedded in higher education since that time?